chapter 7 the making of african americans in a white america

Chapter 7

The Making of African Americans in a White America

Slavery

• The U.S. has the eighth largest Black population in the world

• Slavery began in 1619 with 20 Africans in Jamestown as indentured servants

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Slavery

• 1660’s British colonies passed laws– Blacks became slaves for life– Interracial marriage was forbidden– Children of slaves bore the status of the

mother regardless of father’s race


Slave Codes

• Legal & protected by the US Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court

• Slavery in US rested on 5 central conditions:– Slavery was for life– Status was inherited– Slaves were considered mere property


Slave Codes

– Slaves were denied rights– Coercion was used to maintain the system

• 1 Could not marry or meet with a free Black

• 2. Marriage between slaves not legally recognized


Slave Codes

• 3. Slave could not legally buy or sell anything except by special arrangement

• 4. Slave could not possess weapons or liquor

• 5. Slave could not quarrel with or use abusive language toward Whites


Slave Codes

• 6. Slave could not possess property, except as allowed by his or her owner

• 7. Slave could make no will, nor could he or she inherit anything

• 8. Slave could not make a contract or hire him or herself out


Slave Codes

• 9. Slave couldn’t leave plantation without a pass of his/her destination/time of return

• 10. No one, including Whites, was to teach a slave to read or write – Or to give a slave a book, including the Bible

• 11. Slave could not gamble

• 12. Slave had to obey established curfews


Slave Codes

• 13. Slave could not testify in court except against another slave

• Rules varied by state and were not always enforced

• Violations dealt with in a variety of ways– Mutilation and branding– Imprisonment was rare; most were whipped


Slave Codes

• Owner immune from prosecution for physical abuse

• Slavery and its justifying ideology emerged out of Western Colonialism

• Ideology of slavery & slave codes were invented primarily to: – Maintain the subjugation of Africans


Slave Codes

• Most slaves were from Northwestern African societies and were diverse in:– language – kinship systems– economic systems– political systems


African Americans and Africa

• Survival of African culture documented in:– Folklore– Religion– Language– Music

• Afrocentric perspective


Attack on Slavery

• Slavery as an institution was vulnerable to outside opinion

• Abolitionists– Whites and free Blacks who opposed slavery

• Did not believe in racial equality; i.e., Abraham Lincoln


Attack on Slavery

– Spoke out against slavery and the harm to the nation

• Slaves revolted– Between 40,000 and 100,000 escaped from

South– Fugitive slave acts provided for return, even

those who reached free states


Attack on Slavery

• Not all attempted to escape because failure meant death– Resisted through passive resistance

• Feigned clumsiness or illness• Pretended not to understand, see, or hear• Ridiculed Whites with mocking subtle humor that

owners did not comprehend


Slavery’s Aftermath

• The period of reconstruction 1867-1877– Military Governors– Black participation in the political process– Fifteenth Amendment ratified 1870

• The emergence of segregation laws (Jim Crow)


Slavery’s Aftermath

• Supreme court decisions and segregation– Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)– Williams v. Mississippi (1898)

• White primary elections


Reparations For Slavery

• Slavery Reparation– Refers to the act of making amends for the

injustice of slavery

• What form should reparation take?– Corporations that benefit from slavery and

financial compensation– An official apology



– Financial compensation

• Congressman John Conyers (Detroit)– Commission to study appropriate remedies

• Absence of an official apology angers many African Americans

• Attitudes divided along racial lines on government cash payments



• Private companies that still exist benefited from slavery– Railroads; Insurance Companies

• Most African Americans and some citizens disappointed by:– Unwillingness to debate issue in Washington,

D.C.


The Challenge of Black Leadership

• Booker T. Washington– Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama– Politics of Accommodation

• Approach to White supremacy• Forgo social equality until Whites saw Blacks were

deserving• Essential theme was compromise



– Self help and economic self determination– Congratulated by President Grover Cleveland– Organization became the Urban League

• W.E.B. DuBois– Born to a free family in Massachusetts– First African-American to receive a Doctorate

from Harvard



– Racism as the problem of Whites– Advocated the policy of the talented

tenth– Most outspoken critic of Booker T.

Washington– Organization became the NAACP

• The Politics of Accommodation


Niagara Movement

• DuBois criticized Washington’s influence in Washington, D.C.– Washington’s power being used to stifle

African Americans • Who spoke out against the politics of

accommodation


Niagara Movement

– Washington caused the transfer of funds from academic programs to vocational education

– Washington’s statements encouraged Whites to place the burden of the Black’s problems

• On the Blacks themselves

• DuBois advocated theory of the talented tenth as alternative


Niagara Movement

– Privileged Blacks, 1/10th must serve the other 9/10th of the Black population

• African American education should be academic to improve their positions

• Invited 29 Blacks for strategy session near Niagara Falls


Niagara Movement

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 1909– Consisted of Blacks and Whites– Founded by the leaders of the Niagara

Movement– Marked the merging of White liberalism and

Black militancy


Reemergence of Black Protest

• World War II signaled improved economic conditions for Whites and Blacks

• Efforts by Blacks to contribute to the war effort at home hampered by discrimination

• Philip Randolph– Threatened march on Washington in 1941

• Roosevelt responded by issuing executive order


Reemergence of Black Protest

• The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)– Founded to fight discrimination with

nonviolent direct action

• Restrictive Covenant– Declared unconstitutional in 1948

• Military desegregated by President Truman in 1948


The Civil Rights Movement

• Desegregation of public schools

• De jure segregation– NAACP - Brown v. Board of Education of

Topeka Kansas, US Supreme Court decision• Marked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement

– James Meredith (1962) University of Mississippi


Civil Disobedience

• Belief that people have the right to disobey the law under certain circumstances

• Widely used by Martin Luther King, Jr.– Active non violent resistance to evil– Win friendship and understanding of

opponents


Civil Disobedience

– Attack forces of evil rather than people doing evil

– Accept suffering without retaliation– Refusing to hate the opponent– Acting with the conviction that the universe is

on the side of justice


Urban Violence and Oppression

• Explaining Violence– Riff-Raff/Rotten Apple Theory

• Riot participants were mostly unemployed youth with criminal records

• Discredited the rioters and left the barrel of apples, White society, untouched


Urban Violence and Oppression

– Relative Deprivation• Conscious feeling of negative discrepancy

– Between legitimate expectations & present actualities

– Rising Expectations• Refers to the increasing sense of frustration that

legitimate needs are being blocked


Black Power

• Born not of Black but of White violence

• Phrase frightened Whites and offended Blacks

• Stokely Carmichael

• Black Panther Party– Founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in

Oakland, California in October 1966


The Religious Force

• Black leaders emerged from the pulpits

• Religion always a source of political change and spiritual strength – From slavery to the present

• Most African Americans are overwhelmingly Protestant


The New Immigration

• New immigration trends from Africa and the Caribbean

• Diverse group of young immigrants as students, to join relatives and as refugees

• Experience the same problems of transitioning into a new society – Experienced by other-immigrants


chapter 7 the making of african americans in a white america

Documents

slave codes slaves

slavery slavery

pearson education

slave rules

slave codes owner immune

slave codes legal protected

rights coercion

world slavery